A day before England play Germany in the World Cup, and as you'd imagine the papers have lost the place completely. The piss-poor state of all this.

"It's war!" screams the Daily Star, with depressing predictability, and a picture of a grinning Wayne Rooney wearing a tin hat, like what yer great-uncle Tommy did back in yer actual fackin day. "We will fight jeering Jerries on the pitches," brays the standfirst. Yes. Yes we will. In our tin hats, no doubt. In the pic, Rooney doesn't even need a bayonet, he's that hard. He's going in armed with only his big fists, knuckles gleaming in the sunlight. Come on Germany! We'll take you on in a fight. In the pub. But no tin hats. We don't have any tin hats. Actually, we don't know any Germans, either. We'll just fight each other at 6.27pm tomorrow evening, tired and emotional after necking one WKD too many.

Inside, there's another picture of Rooney standing with his fists cocked, ready to windmill. What on earth was he thinking? The headline screams ROON: I'LL BLITZ FRITZ. The date on the top of the page reads Saturday 26 June 2010.

The Sun claims Germany are "scaredy cats", on account of viewing a trio of wild cats on safari from the safety of a caged truck: GERMANS TERRIFIED OF THREE LIONS. It's almost clever, that. Until you remember that this accusation is coming from a newspaper who in industrial disputes during the 1980s infamously shipped workers past union picket lines in armoured vans.

Oh, look, Rooney's got his fists up again. Would you like to fight Wayne Rooney? His advisers probably need a clip round the lugs, at the very least.

The Mirror, perhaps mindful of the way they made a complete show of themselves at Euro 96 with that ACHTUNG SURRENDER "joke", play it a bit straighter. Not only do they deign to report Franz Beckenbauer's light-hearted apology for making those light-hearted remarks about England's poor early displays – an apology ignored by the Star and the Sun, just, y'know, to stoke the flames – they also run an amusing report about an Oberhausen octopus called Paul who has correctly predicted the results of all three Germany games so far, and has plumped for a German win tomorrow.

The Sun, in the mood to trash everything German – take action if you live in the Wapping area and drive a Volkswagen, Audi, BMW or Mercedes-Benz – can't even leave this alone. Poor Paul is downsized to a "mystic mollusc" and compared unfavourably to "Ramsey the Octopus with his great ball skills" from Plymouth's National Marine Aquarium. God almighty, are we this desperate?